Rooks and knights do battle at Bunratty

IRELAND’S biggest chess event, the Bunratty International Chess Festival, is underway with world number seven Veselin Topalov taking part.

There is a classic running until Sunday, with the main tournament on Friday to Sunday in the Bunratty Castle Hotel.
Speaking to The Clare Champion on Wednesday, festival PRO Brian Scully said, “The top Irish international masters are playing, people like Sam Collins and Alex Lopez.
“We’re hoping that they will be able to achieve what is called a Grand Master norm, which is a step towards achieving their Grand Master title. In order to do that you have to play a certain level of event, they have to be of a certain standard, so many Grand Masters have to take part and we’re hoping this classic will help them to achieve that.”
The main event kicks off on Friday at 8pm, with five more games on Saturday and Sunday. “Veselin Topalov will be playing, who’s ranked number seven in the world. Nigel Short, who played Kasparov in the ’90s for the world championship, will be playing. That match was shown over a number of weeks on Channel 4 and the Grand Master who was commenting on it, Danny King, has played here several times and actually won it in the past.”
There are four separate sections in the festival. “It caters for beginner at the lower end, the next section caters for the mid-level club player, the third section is for the stronger club player and the top section is for the Grand Masters, lads who are over a rating of 2000.”
There is also a fun event on Sunday. “We have an event on Sunday evening at 9pm called Blitz Chess. There’s no prizemoney for it, it’s just fun chess. The Grand Masters all participate and the ordinary Joe Soap can play as well. You get a chance to play a Grand Master at five minute chess and it’s all a bit of fun.”
He says people come from around the country to watch the action and many more watch it on the web. “We actually broadcast all our top games live onto the web and last year we had about five million hits for the weekend. A lot of them were recycled hits, but there were 40 to 50,000 spectators worldwide, when you get the breakdown of the individual IP addresses. There were people watching it in Australia, Brazil, China, all over the world.”
Brian will be acting as an arbiter over the weekend and while chess usually doesn’t need much refereeing, he has to be on his toes. “You’d be going around keeping an account of what matches are going on, which ones are getting into time trouble, making sure they are played fairly, that no one is influencing anyone else or trying to win by unsporting means.”
How would one cheat in chess? “You can distract; another thing is making false claims. If older players are playing younger players they would know a lot more about the game and you have to make sure that they don’t cheat them out of positions or claim a win where there wouldn’t be a win.”
Hundreds of people will take part in what is now one of the biggest festivals in Britain and Ireland. “We’re the fourth largest chess tournament in the British Isles at the moment. It’s the biggest in Ireland and the numbers are definitely going to exceed 300. We had 284 pre-entered as of Wednesday so we’re expecting another 20 or 30 more to come in on the day.”